Dreaming My Life Away
by hannahncakes
Summary: All she has left is her little blue diary and the memories it holds. But memories fade too fast and so she clings to them for all she's worth. One-shot.


Dreaming My Life Away

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing but an ever growing & slightly unhealthy obsession with Doctor Who.

_Author's Note: So I have a slight fixation with memory & remembering & this is where this sprang from. Oh and the words at the very end are not mine, but I expect you all would recognise that anyway ;) Other than that there's not a lot to say. So enjoy…_

I know these words inside out and back-to-front, as if they are ingrained in my skin, no- within my very heart. My eyes flick over them, skimming them but not really reading them because I know them so well. Merely the sight of the shapes on the page comforts me. Each casual pen scratch, each mark on the once-crisp-white paper burns within me and brings me the memories that I live in. Once so fresh, so clear, now they fade before my eyes and I cling onto them like a man dying of thirst tries to capture each bead of water that slips through his cupped hands. But try as you might you cannot keep hold of it all. The smell of his hair, the rough feel of his worn hands, the way the wind ruffled his fringe, the sound of my name as it rolled off his tongue… it fades every day. I try to remember it, to re-live it and pretend it's still real, still happening. Try to pretend it's not all over.

_Dear Diary, _

_I guess that's how you start these kind of things, right? I've never been one for writing diaries before but today everything has changed. There was a man, The Doctor he called himself, and he fell from the sky and caught my hand and gave me this diary and we ran and now I feel nothing will ever be the same again. I feel like I've been waiting for him my entire life. I feel like this is the beginning of __everything__ and like my life has just been on hold until this moment. I want to write everything down. I don't want to forget a thing… _

The writing is scrawled and scribbled and miss-spelt. My excitement couldn't be contained by pen and paper. I remember the way my heart raced as I tried to describe the twinkle in his eye and the fact he knew everything about me. My mystery man, my Doctor. I drew pictures and doodled hearts around the edges of the page. So young, so full of awe. The very first page. I never lost that feeling- wherever we went, no matter how long I'd been travelling with him for- I always felt like a young girl trying desperately to remember each moment, to document each feeling. Because if it was never recorded how would I know it really happened? Forgetting was always my biggest fear- even at the beginning. Forgetting him, just one second of him, or him forgetting me terrified me. I felt as if if he forgot me I would just cease to exist.

_Diary, _

_Today we went to Rome, ancient Rome that is. Somehow he always knows the places I've longed to visit since I was a child. It was magnificent, beautiful… and so was he. All the places he's visited- I could listen to him talk about them forever. Although I'd never tell him that of course. When I'm with him it's like I make sense. All the time and space running through my head is suddenly less daunting and more amazing when he's there to explain it to me. He makes me feel like I'm as wonderful as he is. We're the same. After a childhood, well a lifetime really, of having to restrain myself- to try to be normal for people around me- you have no idea how liberating it is to be with someone who understands and who loves me regardless of it-even because of it…_

The words gushed from my pen. They spun across the page without me thinking about them. They're written hurriedly, barely legible all these years on. But I still feel it. The way when he kissed me it felt like coming home to a place I never knew existed but I'd missed all my life. So many years of being trapped on a planet full of people who had no idea who or what I was had nearly driven me crazy and left me feeling thoroughly alone until I found him, or he found me. The last Time Lord and the only Part-Time-Lord-Part-Human. The last and first of our species. We were always connected in more ways than even we understood. That we ever would understand. I stare down at those words, willing them to make me feel it again, to feel the connection and the belonging. To feel him hold me one more time. But words are only words and they can never take me back into his arms, no matter how hard I wish for it.

_Diary,_

_Today was simply amazing. I wish it never had to end. We travelled to any star and every star I picked out and I flew the TARDIS so we actually got there in time and in one piece- first for everything! He said there was no reason but I knew he was treating me. We both know it can't last forever, this time when we're both in-synch and know everything about each other but we try not to dwell on it. We explore. We adventure. We laugh and we kiss and we make love under the stars and we try not to imagine how much it will hurt when this time comes to an end and we have to return to the normality of being back-to-front and all mixed up. So we kept travelling. Today must have been actually about a week strung together spent on different planets and in different time-zones and I'm shattered but I'm afraid that if I fall asleep it will be all that bit closer to being over. We've seen so much and yet the bits that I remember the most are the way his arms felt around my shoulder as we watched the sun set and the way his lips felt against my ear as he whispered that he loved me in every language he knew…._

The words are perfectly formed and thought out, measured and weighed-up. Every sentence burned with promise and love and sadness and regret in equal measure. It hurts to read these words but the kind of hurt you like, it hurts because it's gone but you're so happy to have just experienced it. I want to smell the lavender in our bedroom, to feel the shake of the TARDIS under my feet, to smell the coffee brewing in the morning. That time, all too short and all too blurred, was the happiest of my life. I want to scoop the words up and wrap them around me, to dive head first and drown in them. I want to be that person again, the woman writing to her future self, rather than the one trying desperately to cling to memories that are gone.

_DD, _

_The days are long and dull and cold and lonely now. My cell feels more like a prison than ever before. I know I could escape, like I've done so many times before, but what would be the point? I have nowhere to go without him. He barely knows me. The last time we met there was no love in his eyes- a little curiosity, affection maybe but certainly no love and no trust. Not an ounce. I know my time with him is nearly over. When we meet again I'm sure he'll have no memory of me, no idea what we mean to each other. I don't know how I'll cope, if I'll cope at all. I sit here and I try to carry on breathing, carry on living even when there is no hope for me. I will go on because I have to but not because I want to. Not right now. It's so hard…_

The words are smudged from my tears. I cried when I wrote it and I cry every time I remember it. The happy memories fade so fast but the sadness sticks like a bone in my throat. It never leaves and I am never allowed to forget. Every time I breathe the pain catches in my chest- a constant reminder of what I've lost. And I've lost so much. Because you can't really know sadness until you've been completely happy and had it taken away. I wouldn't change one second of it though. It hurts and it stings and it feels like my heart is breaking now but that doesn't mean I would undo anything that happened between us. What is it they say? It's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. I guess they're right.

I trace back every page, scrawling in additional notes. The colour of his bowtie, the angle he tilted his head at, the smell of the air, the colour of the flowers, the exact words he said to me. It's hard to read the original entries because I've put so much around it. Useless information, to anyone else. To me it's all I have to cling on to. Memories fade. Memories fade and they die and I need to keep them with me for as long as possible- to keep the picture of me and him and our time together in my head until I can hold on to it for no longer. I trace my fingers over the letters until they're almost worn away. I read everything, and write down every single nugget of information my brain can drag up to put off the inevitable. To put off the end. That one blank page I have to write on still.

I have to tell our final story, our final adventure, but the words won't come. I don't want to write about the man I love who doesn't know me, or the fact I'm condemned to an eternity of normality. I don't want this to be the final chapter to our story. Of course he saved me, he had to- he's the Doctor and that's what he does. He didn't know how much it would kill me to live forever without him. Every night sleeping alone with tears streaming down my face as I wished he were next to me. In my perfect world with my perfect friends and perfect children everything is so very wrong because it's not the life I was supposed to live. I knew it would end, I was never naive enough to believe I would be able to be with him forever, but I never thought that when it ended I would be forced to carry on and pretend to live while my memories, the only things I had left to cling to, slipped away like sand in an hour glass.

My mother always told me I was going to be brave. All the things I've seen, and all the things I've done, have never felt brave before. It always came naturally, I never had to fight for it. And now I'm just living day to day- just existing without him. Now I'm trying to enjoy the life he's given me while I know that he's out there without me. Now I have to write my final entry into the diary I shall live the rest of my life reading. Maybe now is when I have to be brave.

_Goodbye Diary, _

_I guess that's how you end these things. I've never really finished a diary before but I think this is it. This has to be my final __entry. I have to finish the story that can never be told- our story. __When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it will never end. But however hard you try, you can't run forever…_

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